


Art for Remember When

by whichstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Art post, DCBB, Dean/Cas Big Bang, M/M, remember when
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-23 20:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21087458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Art for VioletHaze / SconesandTextingandMurder's 2019 DCBB story, Remember When





	Art for Remember When

I was lying in a tent in the middle of a forest and sunlight was just beginning to filter through the trees. It was five minutes past the start of the second round of claims. I had just enough of a cell phone signal to slowly pull up the list of stories. And...there it was. One of my top five stories remained! There’s nothing like a successful claim to start the morning off right! 

@[**scones-and-texting-and-murder**](https://scones-and-texting-and-murder.tumblr.com)’s story, _Remember When_, is a beautiful story about growing up and finding each other again. Here’s the summary: 

> Castiel Novak meets Dean Winchester in the summer of 1989 when they’re both ten years old. Growing up in small town Kansas is as all-American as climbing trees and little league baseball, but the carefree days of childhood can’t last forever. With adolescence comes new challenges, and Cas finds himself frustrated by decisions Dean makes that he can’t understand. After a big fight junior year, they stop speaking for months, and when tragedy strikes Cas’s family, there’s only time for a quick, heartfelt goodbye before the Novaks move away.
> 
> Six years later, after the death of his father, Cas takes a semester off from grad school and returns to Kansas. There he finds the woods where they used to play bulldozed into a housing development, and the Winchester family similarly fractured and gone. In relaying this news to his mother, he learns Dean was keeping secrets of his own as they grew up, forced by circumstances to take on too much too young. Armed with this new information, Cas impulsively decides to drive west to find him and try to make things right.

You can read the [teen rated version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21045941/chapters/50061095) or the [explicit version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995007/chapters/49927631) on AO3. See below for a little bit about the process!

\---

When I originally read the summary, I was captivated by the description of the boys growing up with a tree in the background, as a touchpoint. I’d planned to do simple illustrations (The Giving Tree came to mind). And then I remembered that drawing is hard! 

The story made me think a lot about memory and how, in films, flashbacks to the past are often faded or misty. I decided on a hybrid solution: I would do all white paper art for the background (evoking misty memory), but have bright, digital illustrations for key focal points of each image (i.e. the tree, the boys, etc.) 

I like to let the cover set the tone for the rest of the pieces, so I started on that first. Friends, it did not go well. (Drawing is hard!) I scrapped my first idea and quietly panicked. 

**Failed Cover Drafts**

I still liked the idea of all white art, or neutral toned art, but I wasn’t sure how to make it work. (If you’re familiar with what I do, you’ll know that I feel most comfortable swimming in color.) I found inspiration in a beautiful book cover (_A song of three spirits_, by J. Zachary Pike) and riffed off of it, drawing a stylized tree, and adding Dean, Cas, and Cas’s house to it. I wanted it to be mostly symmetrical, so I drew half of the tree, then scanned the design, put it in a photo editor, duplicated and flipped it. BOOM. One whole image achieved. I printed out template sheets, taped one to the top of the cardstock, and started cutting out all the shapes. The main circle was done by upending a bowl and tracing around it. (I really do not trust my eye or hand when it comes to making something symmetrical!)

I photographed it outdoors in full sun, spinning it around until I got the shadows to fall the way I wanted them to. The top cardstock design is balanced on a shadowbox picture frame, and set on top of some cheap green poster board. 

**Final Cover Drafts**

Okay. So, one down. Now, how was I going to pull off the rest? And still have it fit with the cover? And be interesting? ARGH!

My original sketch for the first scene (marbles scene) was more of a 2D look. But once I had the cover worked out, I started thinking about circles as being one of the visual themes of the art series. The marbles scene changed from a 2D look to a minimalist set of circles. And then, since it seemed a little too minimalist, I added a carved mat and backdrop as well. Set against the same green posterboard as the cover, the two felt more unified to me. 

**Marbles Scene Drafts**

Once I finished that, I decided any pretense of realism was pretty much out the window. For my third piece, I opted to make the prettiest dugout you ever did see, laced with an oak tree motif like the cover. I’d found an artist (Malin Koort) who made these really cool sort of 3D people. (They’re adorable - go check them out.) I decided to adapt that look for my own people (but with less stylistic flair). 

**Dugout Scene Drafts**

Now I was feeling like I was in good shape, I finished up the divider (again with the same oak / swoop motif of the cover). 

With a week to go, I thought about the joke I’d made at the start of our collaboration: that I’d make some NSFW art for the first time. _Why not_, I decided. I had time to give it a whirl. If it didn’t work out, my author still had plenty of pieces to fulfill the DCBB minimum. I again went with white on white, relying on shadow to pull out the edges in the image. There’s a little tiny dick about the size of a sliver of fingernail in the final picture, but the angle isn’t right to show it. It’s enough just to know it’s there, right? 

**Topographical Map of Sex**

Pulling these pieces together, I definitely had Project Runway on my mind. To me, building these pieces was like building a fashion collection. Each piece had to be different and stand on its own, but still be visually and functionally tied together. So, using the same paper, similar techniques, and a repeating pattern really “made it work” for me!

Thanks for reading! If you liked this, please let me know! [Drop a line on Tumblr ](https://whichstiel.tumblr.com/post/188439625875/rememberwhenartpost)or at my [art masterpost on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21087458). 

**Messy Workspace is My Brand**


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